When Baruch Spinoza composed his philosophical masterpiece, the Ethics, he knew that his ideas (particularly those of God) would be considered heretical in the extreme, leading to any number of unpleasant consequences. This was the reason that the Ethics were published in 1677, posthumously (p.97)1. His apprehensions are well justified in the light of what he writes in the Appendix (p.145-149) to Part1: Concerning God (p.129-145) regarding the prejudices present in the minds of human beings
literature. Fahrenheit was building his first mercury thermometer. The Boston Tea Party and the French Revolution occurred. However, some of the most drastic changes occurred in thought. Prior to the eighteenth century, thinkers such as Locke, Spinoza, Descartes, and Hobbes dominated Western thought to the extent that they changed the way people viewed the world. Consequently, much of the eighteenth century philosophy, as well as the general thought, was a product of these precursors. Either
Paideia of "Nihil of Reliabilty of Existing" and Paideia of "Nihil of Truth of Being" ABSTRACT: This paper traces the transformation of the idea of Paideia as an intellectual mode of existence and being in Antiquity, the Middle Ages, the Renaissance, and the modern period to the idea of Paideia as an intellectual mode of the nihil that is oriented toward the future. It comments specifically on the ideas of Leibniz and Heidegger which have contributed to this development. Our understanding
obviously played a factor in the elder Kafka choosing that type of school for his son. Franz disliked the school, and instead found himself emerging in books of other writers such as Spinoza and Darwin. (Baumer, pps 34-35) Later on, Franz stumbled upon Nietzche, and was immediately captured by his ideas and beliefs such as "God is Dead." (That belief of Nietzche would later have a strong influence on works such as "The Judgment") (Baumer, pps 36, 89) Franz found himself drifting further and further from